While cable and satellite program providers will continue to serve the vast majority of homes as the primary signal source, the lack of local HD reception, compression issues, higher costs, billing add-ons, interruptions service, contact difficulties, in-home service waits and lack of programs have left many of these subscribers looking to off-air antennas as good additions and alternatives.

Most TV consumers think of antennas as low-tech devices, but behind some of the newest antenna designs is more than just bent metal and plastic. Many of the TV antenna designs on the market today, such as the Yagi and rabbit ears, have technological roots that go back 30 to 50 years or more. However, the shift to digital broadcasts is returning consumers to off-air reception, and increased sales provide the motivation and investment needed to develop new models and new technologies.

The fact that most designs on the market now were developed before the advent of much of the computer technology, software, and algorithms in common use today has left open numerous avenues for improving tried-and-true designs and develop new ones. Additionally, recent regulations and standards are opening new doors for antenna manufacturers to develop smaller antennas with improved performance and aesthetics.

The correct antenna, installed and aimed correctly, without obstacles such as buildings, hills, trees, etc. you will receive the desired local stations in the range you are targeting. And the new antennas, working with the new generation ATSC chips, will mitigate multipathing for viewers in metropolitan/urban locations (bounced signals), including multicast programming, adding several additional local off-air programs and several on Almost completely uncompressed HD. not available by cable or satellite.

As for obstructions like tall buildings in metropolitan/urban areas, spectators will have to deal with multiple paths. Multipath is caused by these buildings and any other hard objects in the line of sight of the transmission towers. They cause signals to arrive at the antenna out of phase, confusing the ATSC (Digital) chipset in the converter box or tuner (for analog or digital TVs).

If the signal arriving at the front of the antenna is not 2-3 times stronger than a bounced signal from the same station arriving at the back of the antenna, the ATSC chip doesn’t know which signal to use, so it keeps looking. The answer again is to upgrade to a new digital antenna, tuned to receive digital signals which helps reject multipath signals.

Some viewers may even receive out-of-town channels, carrying blocked sports shows or broadcasts from networks that aren’t available in their hometown. As an added benefit, an OTA antenna provides reception for second devices in homes that are not wired for whole house signal distribution.

Depending on the level of desire to receive a great free picture and multiple broadcast signals, considering the investment in TV entertainment that many viewers have already made, shouldn’t they consider upgrading to a new off-air digital antenna?